Mr. Trump got the former secretary of state’s attention Thursday afternoon with a tweet shortly after President Obama announced his endorsement of Mrs. Clinton: “Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama — but nobody else does!”

Mrs. Clinton’s official Twitter account retweeted the Trump comment, adding a comment of its own: “Delete your account,” a snarky phrase frequently used online in response to unpopular or bewildering posts.

Mrs. Clinton’s jab at Mr. Trump was shared over 140,000 times in less than two hours and picked up by USA Today, the Boston Globe and other media outlets.

Clinton backers framed the comment as rhetorical knockout, while critics pointed out the irony, with an FBI investigation into her 2009 secret email server ongoing.

Mrs. Clinton operated a secret email server in the basement of her Chappaqua, New York, home as President Obama’s top diplomat. Over 30,000 emails she deemed personal were deleted before she turned over the server to the FBI in August.

Agents are now trying to determine if she violated a subsection of the Espionage Act related to “gross negligence” in handling government documents.

“Did you try to wipe the entire server?” a reporter asked Mrs. Clinton during an August campaign event in Las Vegas.

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